Feedback is the process of providing an individual (or team) with specific information about that person’s (teams) current behavior, skill or performance to encourage further development or modification of the behavior, skill, or performance. Feedback provides a basis for maintaining or improving performance as well as a assessing needs and planning additional experiences/practice. Feedback can be provided by an expert or a peer both of which have benefits and require practice. Feedback is often most useful when it highlights both positive performance as well as areas of improvement.
Answer Garden
AnswerGarden is a minimalistic feedback tool. Use it in the classroom as an educational tool or at work as a creative brainstorming tool. (Per AnswerGarden website)
AnswerGarden is free. Simply pose a question in AnswerGarden and have the class post 20 to 40 character responses. User responses display as a word/tag cloud.
Device Agnostic
Canvas Media Tool*
Canvas, Geisel’s Learning Management System, affords all users with the opportunity to record audio using the media comment tool available from within the Rich Text Editor. This tool can be used to add audio to course pages, discussions, assignment feedback and even quizzes.
Canvas Peer Review Assignments*
Canvas, Geisel’s Learning Management System, allows instructors to create Peer Review Assignments enabling students to comment and provide feedback on specific assignments. This feedback can be viewed by the instructor who can also provide additional feedback and comments on the submission.
Canvas Quiz/Survey Tool*
Canvas, Geisel’s Learning Management System, affords instructors with the opportunity to solicit feedback from students in the form of both Graded and Ungraded Surveys. By design, survey’s are anonymous and as such it is usually not possible to align the feedback given to the student who provided it.
Qualtrics*
Qualtrics is an online survey tool that allows users to design and deliver surveys for delivery both online and via SMS text messaging. The free version is relatively robust allowing up to 20 surveys with unlimited questions and up to 350 responses.
Survey Monkey
SurveyMonkey is an online survey design and delivery tool. The free version is limited but does allow 10 questions per survey with a maximum of 100 responses per survey.
References
The following are a list of references about the use of feedback in teaching and learning.
- Feedback in higher and professional education: Understanding it and doing it well (2013 book)
- Rethinking models of feedback for learning: The challenge of design
- Cognition, culture and credibility: Deconstructing feedback in medical education
- Senior medical students perceived ability and experience in giving peer feedback in formative longcase examinations
*Tools that appear with an asterisk are commonly used at the Geisel School of Medicine.